2010–11 IRB Sevens World Series

2010–11 IRB Sevens World Series
Host nations	UAE  South Africa  New Zealand  United States  Hong Kong  Australia  England  Scotland
Date	3 December 2010 - 29 May 2011
Final positions
Champions	New Zealand
Runners-up	South Africa
Third	England
Series details
← 2009-10 2011-12 →

The 2010–11 IRB Sevens World Series was the 12th annual series of rugby union sevens tournaments for full national sides run by the International Rugby Board since 1999–2000.

Sevens is a stripped-down version of rugby union, with seven players on each side rather than fifteen. Games are much shorter, seven or ten minutes each half, and tend to be very fast-paced. Sevens is traditionally played in a two-day tournament format. However, the most famous event, the Hong Kong Sevens, was played over three days, largely because it involved 24 teams instead of the normal 16.

The IRB announced dates for the 2010–11 events on 1 June 2010, only two days after the final event of the 2009–10 series, the Edinburgh Sevens. The stops remained unchanged from recent years; the only scheduling change for 2010–11 was that the Adelaide event, which moved from its traditional slot of one week after Hong Kong to one week before in 2010, returned to its prior slot for 2011.

This was the last season for the South Africa leg in George and the Australia leg in Adelaide. On 13 April 2011, both countries' national unions announced that their respective legs of the series would move to new sites for 2011–12. The South Africa Sevens will move to Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth. The Australia leg will move to Skilled Park in the Gold Coast; it was initially known as the "International Rugby Sevens Gold Coast", but later rebranded simply as the "Gold Coast Sevens".

Before each season, the IRB announces the 12 "core teams" that received guaranteed berths in each event in that season's series. The core teams for 2010–11 were:

The core teams were unchanged from 2009–10.

The season championship was determined by points earned in each tournament. The points allocations for all events were identical to those in the 2009–10 series, reflecting changes that the IRB made starting with that season:

In all tournaments except Hong Kong, 16 teams participated. Due to its place as the sport's most prestigious annual event, the Hong Kong tournament had 24 teams. In each 16-team tournament, the teams were divided into pools of four teams, who played a round-robin within the pool. Points were awarded in each pool on a different schedule from most rugby tournaments—3 for a win, 2 for a draw, 1 for a loss. The first tiebreaker was the head-to-head result between the tied teams, followed by difference in points scored during the tournament.

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